Mon 07 October 2019:
The conservative Ennahdha party has come in first in Tunisia‘s parliamentary election, according to an exit poll broadcast by state TV.
The poll by Sigma Conseil showed Rached Ghannouchi’s moderate Islamist party would secure 17.5 percent of Sunday’s vote, or 40 seats in the 217-strong parliament. It was followed closely by Qalb Tounes, a relatively new party founded by jailed media mogul Nabil Karoui, at 15.6 percent or 33 seats.
Hours earlier, Karoui, one of the two candidates to advance to Tunisia’s presidential runoff vote that will be held next week – claimed in a statement that his party had come first.
“We are the most visionary, we want to break the old establishment,” Samy Achour, a senior member of Qalb Tounes’s political bureau, told Al Jazeera.
But if exit polls are anything to go by, not everyone appears ready to do so.
In an election day that came and went without much enthusiasm, voter turnout was expected to be low – recorded at 23.49 percent at 2pm, six hours after the polls opened.
More than 1,500 lists and 15,000 candidates on Sunday ran for 217 seats, with registered political parties and independents vying for control of the single chamber.
While Tunisia is often referred to as the only success story to come out of the Arab Spring, the elections were held against a backdrop of spiralling food prices, inflation and more than 15 percent unemployment.
Preliminary results will be announced on October 10 and official results on November 17. The assembly will then be given two months to choose a prime minister and form a new government.
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